since then btcguild suffered a confirmed withholding event. supposed to be accidental . it did happen and it clearly shows bitcoins weakness is that a wealthy miner and or pool can attack a smaller pool and kill the luck.
OK, I read up on the withholding attack. Does the bolded statement mean a pool can launch the attack, or individuals supporting the larger pool join the targeted pool and withhold?
I am confused about the distinction between individual and pool behavior.
Okay lets pick the guy with the bad luck soft ware. It has been proven to exist. I track him down buy it from him. I now put myself out as a hit man.
So to speak I live in Washington or Oregon Or any place with cheap power. I sub-contract my bad luck system to pools like cex.io or btcguild or eligus they trust me the super villain of BTC and pay me to hit smaller pools with my bad luck gear.
So I run 100th or 200th at bitminter a smaller pool and while they have 1200th of good gear they now have 1400th.
1200 good and 200 bad. It only takes 45 sp30's to do this or 450 s-3's . or 200 dragon miners.. do it for a week in a row and the cost is my power. say 4000 kwatts a day
that is 200 usd a day thats all in power cost. so a one month cost against bitminter is 6000 in power and they will have a 12/14 or
85 percent luck of normal not 100 percent.. forget the lost btc I know people say whattt. but the incentive to attack smaller pools is huge.
think of someone with low power cheap gear and the correct software. he does not need to be a pool. he could be and individual hired by bigger pools. to attack smaller pools.
Now does he exsist? I do not know.
Does cex.io attack small pools? I do not know
Does anyone do this join a pool with bad luck gear/software for the purpose of attacking that pool? I do not know.
But it did happen to one pool BTCguild and most likely to Eligus pool. Accident well maybe on purpose well maybe. I am on many pools.